On the Homestead: Brownie points for balancing carbon output

I hate the fact that when Thursday comes along I get in my car and drive for two and half hours to the farm, notching up the carbon footprint. And then I turn around on Sunday and do it again on the trek back to Toronto. In the past I have tried to compensate for my burning of all those fossils fuels by always bringing something back and forth.

Some attempts have had “Fail” stamped all over them. One of my favourites was to haul in my Hyundai wagon bins of organic vegetables past their freshness date from a local Toronto organic grocery store; I was going to bring them to the farm to compost and eventually add to the soil. Great idea, right? Except pickup was Tuesday, and I wasn’t leaving for the farm until Thursday. Imagine how stinky it got in my car when the veggies started fermenting after two days of sitting in the wagon! That project was shelved anyway, after my car broke down and it got towed to Canadian Tire, where they deemed it a hazard because of the smell and wouldn’t work on it.

When we started our Community Shared Agriculture (CSA) bags at the farm, eight customers in Toronto signed on to have veggies dropped off to them weekly. Another few points off the carbon meter! This project was definitely a success for our clients and for the Hill and we have just finished our second year of the program.

So when my editor forwarded an email to me from another writer about The Malt Exchange, where Toronto breweries give away spent malt from the brewing process to farms for animal feed or composting, I jumped at the chance.

Signe Langford got me in touch with Bellwoods Brewery owners Mike Clark and Luke Pestl at their Argyle and Ossington location. I went for my first pickup not sure what to expect, but as soon as I got there, everyone was excited about the farmer picking up the spent malt instead of it going into the city’s composting bin. It’s a win-win, everybody happy!

My trip to the Hill from Toronto was quite pleasant that Thursday, as the car had a great post-party hop scent (I hoped I wouldn’t get pulled over by the OPP and have to explain the aroma of beer, especially since I was also carrying a six-variety pack of beer I had bought for me and Lea). I made it, and even ended up using one of the beers to make a beer-and-cheddar-cheese bread that was so yummy we’ve decided to keep it in our Best-Of recipe box.

We were careful on the first day of giving the spent malt to the chickens, not giving them too much to start off. But by the end of the weekend, the girls were looking forward to the new sweet porridge additive to their diet.

We are into our second month of pickups now and it’s still great. I’m driving north with a carload of hops, the hens are happy, Bellwoods Brewery’s happy, our last-harvest veggie clients are happy (I trust) and we’re happy. But the scent of hops is still pretty strong in the car.